


And the Twist of Fate

by Imagination_Parade



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Bickering, Coda, Conflict, Episode: s04e02 And the Steal of Fortune, Gen, Normal Life, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-28 23:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13282083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagination_Parade/pseuds/Imagination_Parade
Summary: An unexpected package in the mail leaves Cassandra not quite ready to give up on the idea of ever having anything normal.





	And the Twist of Fate

**Author's Note:**

> This season is moving so fast, this episode now feels like a million years ago, but I'm posting this anyway, lol. Personally, I think they're all a little too skillfully special to ever be "normal," but we always want what we can't have, right? Enjoy :)

Cassandra Cillian walked slowly down the hallway into the Annex, an envelope hugged tightly against her chest. Hesitancy characterized her movements as she traversed the familiar path and mentally tried to figure out what she was going to say once she found her bosses. Almost any mail that wasn’t some type of bill, medical or otherwise, was a bit of a surprise to Cassandra. She got so little of it, she didn’t even bother to check her box every day on her way up to her apartment, but she had to think it wasn’t a coincidence that she had discovered this particular envelope, the one snuggled against her cardigan, upon her return from a day filled with a whole bunch of muddled luck and a warning that remaining with the building whose walls she currently walked through would mean she could never have anything _normal_.

She reached the juncture of the hallway and the Annex’s main room and stopped just before the doorway. She peered inside and found Baird and Flynn sitting together at a desk across the room. Baird was working on paperwork, and Flynn was working on nothing at all, his feet propped up on the edge of the desk. A hint of relief washed over Cassandra as she realized she wouldn’t have to go searching for one of them, but then she briefly glanced at the emblem on the upper-left of the envelope, and a twinge of anxiety traveled across her stomach. With a deep breath, she gathered her courage, straightened her spine a bit, and walked into the room. The envelope’s contents were _good_ ; she just had no idea how they were going to react.

Baird’s eyes quickly left the paperwork and found Cassandra as she walked up to them with a firm stride and a confident purpose and opened her mouth as if she was about to say something. Once she reached her destination, however, she faltered. Cassandra glanced down at the insignia again – the one that she’d simply sat at her kitchen table staring at for nearly an hour the night before – and closed her mouth. Baird’s eyebrows rose a bit, waiting for whatever it was Cassandra clearly had to tell them, but with a small shake of her head and a self-defeated sigh, Cassandra changed her mind and started walking away.

“Come back!” Baird called.

At her voice, Flynn sat up straighter in his chair, his feet hitting the floor as he realized something was going on, and Cassandra stopped in the middle of the room, pausing for a moment as she scrunched her face up in a silent self-scolding. Cassandra rolled her eyes at her own behavior before spinning on one foot to face them again. She stayed in place in the middle of the room, looking a little sheepish as she met Baird’s eyes, and Baird held up one single, solitary finger, curling it from Cassandra’s direction towards her own body.

“Come back,” she said again. Cassandra shuffled back over to where she’d just stood directly in front of the desk like a kid who knew she was about to get into trouble. “What is it?” Baird asked.

“I…I did something,” Cassandra said. “Um…while I was stuck in bed…recovering…with a lot of free time for thinking and…Interneting.”

“Cassandra,” Baird said firmly, knowing the stalling could go on for a while if she didn’t put an end to it.

“Or maybe it was just the painkillers or something,” Cassandra rambled. “Those things did make me kind of crazy, at least the super strong ones at the beginning.”

“ _Cassandra_ ,” Baird said again.

“And I actually kind of forgot about it until I found this in the mail last night, but…” She stopped then, electing instead to just hand over the precious package in her arms.

Baird paid no attention to the return address on the front and turned the envelope around to reach inside. Her expression obstinate, she pulled out the enclosed folder and the separate letter that had come with it, almost not really wanting to know what her Librarian had gotten herself into this time. Baird’s face softened, however, as soon as she realized what she was holding.

“Columbia?” Baird asked, surprise and a hint of pride in her voice. At that, Flynn’s brow furrowed, and he leaned over to see what she was looking at, too.

“I didn’t think I’d get in,” Cassandra admitted.

Both Baird and Flynn scoffed a bit at that notion, sharing a look. Flynn turned to her and asked, “Cassandra, you’re utterly brilliant; why would you think you wouldn’t be accepted?”

“Because I’m not eighteen, and my GED is nearly fifteen years old, and I don’t have a long list of extracurricular activities,” Cassandra said, rattling off a list of reasons that she’d clearly told herself a time or two before. “I barely have a resume since I wasn’t exactly sure how to put _this_ on one of those, and that’s one of most competitive schools in the country. The acceptance rate in 2016 was only about six percent.”

“And why weren’t you going to show us this?” Baird asked.

“Because it doesn’t matter,” Cassandra said with a small voice and a forced smile. “It was just yesterday that Flynn said we can’t be normal and Jenkins said we have higher callings now, so…it doesn’t matter. I have to decline.”

Flynn, upon hearing her explanation, started nodding his head as if to agree with what she’d just said. Baird noticed the nodding almost immediately. Cassandra did, too, her face almost imperceptibly falling. Baird knew Cassandra had only half-believed the reasoning that had just left her own lips; Flynn’s reaction had disappointed her, though she was trying mightily to hide it. Baird looked back and forth between her Librarians for a moment before she stood up.

“No, you don’t,” Baird declared, dropping the folder back on the desk.

“What?” Cassandra asked, surprise and a little bit of hope evident in both her voice and her eyes.

“What?” Flynn echoed. He chuckled briefly and said, “Sweetie, she doesn’t need a…” Flynn switched his gaze to Cassandra and continued. “You don’t need a degree.”

“Easy for the guy who has 23 of them to say!” Baird argued as Cassandra’s face fell again, her eyes traveling back to the floor.

“That’s different,” Flynn argued. “I had not yet pledged myself to the Libr…”

Baird cut him off with a single noise and a raised hand. Once he’d stopped, she pointed her hand towards Cassandra.  “Look at her,” Baird argued.

They both turned to look at the younger Librarian. She was trying to put on a neutral face, but her expression was colored with emotions of hope that this might finally be her time to get something she had grown up thinking would be just a given in her life, and disappointment that after everything she’d been through, maybe it wasn’t really meant to be at all.

“Guys, it’s okay,” Cassandra said, growing uncomfortable underneath their shared gaze. “I get it. I don’t even know why I said anything. He’s right; I don’t...I don’t need that.”

She didn’t truly believe _that_ statement, either, and Baird, knowing her well enough to know that, too, walked around the desk. She placed herself directly between Cassandra and Flynn, blocking their view of each other.

“Cassandra,” Baird said softly. Flynn started trying to peer around Baird’s body, and Cassandra’s eyes instinctively traveled to the movement behind the woman in front of her. Baird took one step to her left, blocking Flynn from Cassandra’s view again. “Ignore him!”

“Eve!” Flynn protested with a bit of a baffled laugh.

“Do not look at him,” Baird ordered.

“Okay,” Cassandra promised, keeping her wide eyes on Baird.

“Do you want a degree?” Baird asked.

“Yes,” Cassandra admitted.

“Columbia?” she asked again.

“It’s where I always thought I would go before the brain tumor happened.”

Baird turned around and gathered the documents Cassandra had brought into the Annex with her. She put everything on top of the large envelope and handed it all back to Cassandra. “Tell them you’re going,” Baird said.

“What?” Cassandra asked again, her face breaking into a grin this time.

“ _Eve_ , sweetie…” Flynn started behind her.

“Don’t _sweetie_ me,” Baird said fiercely, turning around to face him again. “You and I got several decades of _normal_ before any of this happened,” she said, gesturing to the Library around her. “She didn’t, so if she came out of brain surgery and decided the thing she most wants to do in this world is _go to college_ , I don’t have a problem with that.”

“But…” Flynn began.

“It won’t be normal for her anyway,” Baird interrupted.

“Um,” Cassandra interjected behind her. Baird turned around again. “It won’t?”

“You know it can’t be, right?” Baird asked delicately.

“Because I’m not eighteen?” Cassandra asked.

“Because you’ll be using a _magical door_ to get to class,” Baird pointed out.

“Good point,” Cassandra muttered.

“And because you could probably ace the upper level math finals…math, you want a math degree?” Baird asked.

Cassandra shrugged. “Probably. Or Chemical Physics. Or both. Probably both.”

“She’s getting _two_ degrees now?” Flynn asked incredulously.

“ _My point was_ ,” Baird said turning back to Flynn. “It’s not going to be normal anyway because Cassandra could probably pass all of those classes right now with her eyes closed.” She turned to Cassandra again. “Right?”

Cassandra shrugged again and nodded her agreement. “Probably also correct,” she affirmed.

“The Library is a very different kind of job and a very different kind of life, but it’s not so different that it leaves no time at all for anything else,” Baird said to Flynn. She looked at Cassandra again, and, with the same softer voice from before, said, “You don’t have to say no to this.”

“Are you sure?” Cassandra asked carefully.

“Positive,” Baird confirmed.

“Thank you,” she said, a hint of disbelief evident in her tone.

She let out an excited giggle then as she hugged the pages to her chest again and hurriedly scurried out of the room. Baird, satisfied with her decision, headed back for her chair behind the desk. She took her seat again, and Flynn dropped his head backwards onto her shoulder.

“I don’t think you really heard what I said yesterday,” he said.

“About how I don’t count?” Baird asked.

“About having normal lives,” he corrected not taking the bait.

Baird shrugged, throwing in a small shake of her head. “The Library’s never operated with a team like this before,” she said. “I’m not making anyone give up on normal yet.”

“But…” Flynn argued.

“Plus, Cassandra spending a few years doing homework in her free time instead of playing with magic?” Baird said. “That’s not the worst thing in the world.”

Flynn sat up again, but just as he was about to tease her for acting like the diplomatic good guy when she had a bit of an _ulterior motive_ , the Librarian in question returned to the Annex, placing the paperwork from Columbia safely in her desk drawer.

“You called them that fast?” Baird asked.

“Oh, no, not yet,” Cassandra said. She started gathering a project into her arms and continued with, “I just wanted to show Jenkins. I can fill out all that paperwork later; we’ve got work to do!”

Baird looked at her boyfriend as if to say _“see? It’ll all be fine_ ,” and Flynn nodded, conceding the argument to the women in the room.

“You know,” Flynn said. “With _two_ degrees from Columbia, you’re going to wish you got to keep all those roulette winnings from yesterday.”

Cassandra paused for a moment and pondered his point before simply saying, “I’m sure I can always win more.”

With a mischievous grin, she started to head out of the room again, destined for the Library to complete her task, but before she could disappear entirely, a thought crossed Baird’s mind.

“Hey, Red,” Baird called. Cassandra turned back around to face them again, a quizzical look on her face. “Maybe lose a few rounds next time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments & kudos are always appreciated :)


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